Behind the Yellow Line
by Tactical Strike
Summary: AU Advanceshipping. May, a commuter riding the subway, receives an unexpected challenge from another passenger. One-shot.


DISCLAIMER: I am NOT affiliated with Pokémon and/or related trademarks.

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This is my entry for SPPf Advanceshipping Day contest. My intention was to set this in Tokyo, but I have never been anywhere in Tokyo outside the airport, so Beijing it is.

Place names are explained at the end of the story.

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Behind the Yellow Line

Did she believe in love at first sight? Of course. All the romance novels (and there were quite a few of them) that she had ever read had convinced her of that.

Did she believe that it would ever happen to her? Of course not. She didn't have the luck for that.

May could dream, however, as she rode the escalator upward toward Tiantongyuan Station's southbound platform, immersed in the romance novel she had started the day before. Even at eight in the morning, the humidity and heat of the windless summer day seemed to be almost solid in the way that it filled every little space of the covered aboveground subway station. Perhaps during the late evening hours, the 120 meter long station platform would seem spacious and expansive, and a cool night breeze sweeping through would cause the few passengers to shiver slightly. During the rush hour, though, the thousands of commuters that passed through and crowded every square meter behind the yellow line made the station seem ten times smaller and the ventilation system seem a hundred times less effective at mitigating the heat and humidity.

Neither the stifling heat nor the crowdedness of the station bothered May as she turned a page in her novel. She looked up and saw a train approaching in the distance, so she closed her book and placed it in her handbag – reading on the train gave her headaches so she had stopped trying to. Taking a glance of the outside, May saw that Beijing's usual haze had been reduced slightly, indicating the possibility of rain the next day. She loved rainy days. They cleared the smog and gave a pleasant smell to the air. Rainy days fascinated her romantic side as well; she had always dreamed of going for a walk in Yuetan Park in light rain, sharing an umbrella with someone whom she loved.

Unfortunately, May had yet to fall in love with anyone. As she was living by herself now, away from her family, her loneliness was only exacerbated by the fact that her best friend had recently gotten engaged. The man had been quite rude on the few occasions that May had met him, but she could see that her best friend's relentless positive attitude bonded her and her fiancé perfectly. Even her brother, the glasses-wearing top student, had gotten a girlfriend who attended the same university.

The train rolled into the station. A newer model, it braked without much noise and stopped with its doors aligned exactly with the glass doors on the platform. Although Tiantongyuan was only the second stop, most of the train's seats were filled by passengers who had gotten on at the first station, Tiantongyuan North. The doors slid open noiselessly, and the few lucky passengers closest to them rushed for a seat, while the rest, less fortunate, moved into the standing area. Boarding the train and feeling relieved in the air-conditioned cabin, May grabbed a handhold with her left hand as the train began to accelerate.

"Would you like a seat, miss?" The passenger's voice was friendly as he stood up to allow May his seat. She thanked him gratefully, but didn't manage to glimpse his face as she took the seat.

From her handbag, she removed a Nintendo DSi, coloured in her favourite red. In order to have minimum glare on the screen, she tilted the screen so it was facing almost straight up.

"Hey, that's Pokémon, isn't it? Which version?" May looked up. It was the passenger who had offered her his seat, glancing at the screen curiously.

"HeartGold," she replied slowly. She always played the game on her commute, which took more than an hour each way.

"Nice. Are you up for a battle?" he asked enthusiastically, holding an older model of DS. "I'm Ash, by the way."

"My name's May," she said, introducing herself. "Sure, I'd like a battle. The only person I've ever played against is my brother, and he always wins because he checks for individual values or something." May looked up at her challenger. He was fairly good-looking, she reasoned, and her mind immediately generated many possibilities for subsequent events, each based on the plot of some romance novel that she had read. However, that was not her focus now, as she had a battle to win.

Her opponent's trainer sprite indicated that he was playing Platinum, and the first Pokémon he sent out was a Staraptor. May knew that she had to be careful of its high base attack and speed, but she was sure that her Blastoise could defeat it and immediately ordered her attack.

Battles that dragged on and stalled like the one May was locked eventually became tedious. Her final Pokémon, the Blaziken she had transferred from Sapphire, had finally defeated Ash's Tauros with its Sky Uppercut. The last of her opponent's Pokémon was a Sceptile. Restricted to Sky Uppercut by Blaziken's Choice Scarf, May tried to wear down Sceptile gradually, and she believed that she could win, especially as the Grass type's -2 Dragon Pulse wasn't doing much in return.

The train slowed to a stop in the tunnel as it approached a brightly lit underground platform. May had not been keeping track of which stations had passed, nor did she notice that the train had become less crowded with each consecutive station.

"We have arrived at Dongdan Station. Please prepare to get off on the left side. Dongdan is a transfer station. Passengers for Line 1, please prepare to transfer."

The announcement instantly brought May out of her engrossment in the game.

"This is my stop!" she exclaimed hurriedly as she switched off her DSi, leaving the battle at a draw. As she stood up to disembark, she noticed that her opponent had done so as well.

"It's my stop as well. I'm transferring to Line 1."

"Really? Then we shouldn't have switched our games off! I would have won," declared May confidently.

"You're pretty good, but you couldn't have won," Ash concluded. "One more Focus Blast and it would have been over." May was silent, having forgotten Focus Blast's base accuracy, and the pair walked together awkwardly in the crowd toward the Line 1 platform.

The transfer station was not really one station, but two distinct stations connected by tunnels and stairs. The cool light from the ceiling-mounted fluorescent tubes reflected off the white-tiled walls marked only by a red stripe, evenly illuminating the face of every passenger. Although the multitude of indistinct voices combined with the other noises of rush hour made holding a normal conversation difficult and the section of tunnel was hardly fifteen meters long, the walk felt to May like a long-distance race and the uncomfortable silence seemed to last for twenty minutes, not twenty seconds.

They reached a flight of six stairs that led to another, shorter tunnel.

"So, um, are you from Beijing?" asked May hesitantly. Almost immediately she regretted doing so, as her counterpart's slight but obvious accent made clear by itself that he was.

"Yeah, I grew up in Shijingshan," he replied in a friendly manner. "How about you?"

"No, I'm from Jinan, I came to Beijing for a better job," she recalled. Her hometown had been a pleasant city, especially when flowers bloomed in the spring. Ash nodded understandingly.

May was unaware that she had already reached the next flight of stairs and almost tripped on the first step. She caught herself quickly on the railing and turned away, embarrassed and blushing.

"Um," Ash began. "Is your family in Jinan?" he finished after a pause. Attempting, not completely successfully, to regain her composure, May answered rather shyly.

"Everyone except my younger brother; he's at university in Shanghai because he spends too much of his time studying and did well enough on his exams. Actually, he sent me a copy of Pokémon Sapphire a few years ago, and I think that's how I got into it," she explained, then realised that she had strayed from the topic but continued nonetheless. "I play on the subway now, mostly, to pass the time."

"It takes me a long time to get to work as well. I can't afford housing near my workplace."

"That's everyone's story, isn't it? I think Tiantongyuan is a decent place to live, though," agreed May as they reached the top of the final flight of stairs and entered the station platform, where the crowd had thinned slightly.

Ash's reply was lost as a train entered the station and those around the pair moved forward toward the doors. As the train was already full, May didn't have the luck to get another seat, hardly having even standing room in her position leaning against a door on the opposite side of the cabin. The ride, which wasn't very long but usually seemed lengthy to her, was over much earlier than she expected, and she found herself on the westbound platform of Fuxingmen Station, the train having left the station and produced a rush of air as it passed which pulled gently at her skirt.

"Are you all right?"

"What? Yes, of course!" May replied quickly, flustered, and regained her focus to realise that Ash was staring at her. She felt her cheeks heat up rapidly.

"You're standing past the yellow line," he pointed out anticlimactically. May quickly took a step forward. "My workplace is on the other side of the Second Ring," continued Ash, pointing to the southwest exit.

"Oh, I work two blocks down that way," May interjected and tried to point at the northeast exit, which unfortunately was not in direct view of the platform.

"So, um, you know that noodle shop over by the pedestrian overpass there?" Ash asked rather uncomfortably. May nodded, fairly sure that she knew the restaurant he was referring to. "Um, when do you usually eat lunch?" he asked, trying to extend the conversation.

"Around one."

"Would you like me to buy you lunch there today?" he blurted hurriedly, and, when she made no initial response, continued with "We can resolve that battle! I'd like to win it!"

May grinned. "Sure, if you want to be defeated. One o'clock then?" Nodding his confirmation, Ash turned and headed toward the row of turnstiles nearest the southwest exit, quickly becoming indistinguishable in the crowd.

Sliding her transit card past the upward-facing scanner on the turnstile console, May pushed one of the three smooth metal bars forward to allow herself through. As she reached the stairs leading to the exit and began to ascend them, she placed her transit card back into her handbag, her hand brushed against the cover of the romance novel that she had been reading earlier and she immediately recalled the details of the plot up to the point to which she had read. Her mind then turned to the day.

Of course she still believed in love at first sight. It was just that she believed that it could happen to anyone now, if even she was fortunate enough to experience it.

The stairs of Fuxingmen Station's northeast exit opened up at the surface to a square lobby in a windowed rectangular building the size of two adjacent shipping containers. On the last few steps of the stairs, May, feeling a cold breeze on her arms, looked out of the window and noticed that the sky was a greyer shade than it had been earlier in the morning. Pausing for a moment in the lobby, May glanced at her wristwatch. It was nine-ten. Three hours and fifty minutes until one. Walking out onto the pavement, she joined the flow of pedestrians on the busy avenue. As she passed the subway station's dark blue sign that indicated "FUXINGMEN Station" in both Chinese and English, she looked up and a single raindrop fell on her nose.

Soon the rain was falling at a moderate level, and the people around her took cover under umbrellas or bus stop shelters. May continued walking. She loved rainy days.

* * *

This was inspired by the following quote from Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire:

"You never know when or where somebody will challenge you. That's why I never leave home without my GAME BOY ADVANCE."

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Place name explanations:

Tiantongyuan: second station on Line 5 of Beijing subway, named after the neighbourhood in which it is located.

Yuetan Park: Temple of the Moon park in west Beijing and the most often associated with couples and love of Beijing's four such parks (Heaven, Earth, Sun, Moon).

Tiantongyuan North: first station on Line 5 of Beijing subway.

Dongdan: interchange station between Lines 1 and 5.

Shijingshan: district in west Beijing.

Jinan: capital city of the province of Shandong.

Fuxingmen: first interchange station between Lines 1 and 2 of Beijing subway.

Second Ring: innermost ring road around Beijing (there is no first ring).


End file.
